Archive for January, 2004

I took my truck out for about 10 minutes today. I hand built a new linkage for the throttle/brake servo that seemed to be working well. Little did I know. Evidently, it required too much torque from the servo on a constant basis. The net result is that the servo got *really* hot while I was out running the truck. So hot in fact that it melted a small hole in the outer plastic casing and then some water got in through that hole and the servo started to short out. Now, this truck runs on a set of 5 4/5ths A sized NiMH batteries that are rated for 6 volts and 1650mAh of output. In case you aren’t a battery techo geek, that’s a powerful enough battery that when presented with a short it can melt metal objects of reasonable size with the amount of power it will dump through said short. Anyway, when the throttle quit responding, I managed to get the truck over to me, kill the motor by putting my finger over the exhaust, then noticed the smoke just *pouring* out of the servo compartment. I powered it off as soon as I could, but I suspect that I have one totally melted/fried/dead servo in that truck. Sigh….

An excerpt from this mornings IRC log at work:

[06:50] Oh man….
[06:50] Gonna have to clean the bedroom now…
[06:50] dog?
[06:50] Just went in there. That cat is just lounging around on the carper.
[06:51] s/carper/carpet/
[06:51] But, around him on the carpet, there is a pile of bird feathers…
[06:51] Can’t find any bird…
[06:51] uhoh
[06:51] But, there’s about 15 feathers on the carpet.
[06:51] check you shoes
[06:51] Some bird wasn’t an early enough bird
[06:52] * arjan notes dwmw2’s cats bring him presents (mice/birds) and also consider hiking boots and such ideal storage places
[06:52] My cat doesn’t like to bring presents.
[06:52] But, he does like to show off. So he’ll bring in birds/mice and then make a big presentation of eating them right in front of you.
[06:53] maybe he considers you having dinner the same kind of thing
[06:54] I don’t know. Sometimes I think he thinks we eat totally unedible food
[06:54] “Gosh the food-bringer-and-can-opener is eating cooked food again. Can you imagine, COOKED food… Gross”
[06:54]
[06:55] But he does like little bits of cheese slices whenever we are pilling the dogs…

Oh well, let’s just hope he doesn’t piss off the migrating birds like he did once in Springfield. We watched him go outside once and he immediately started getting dive bombed by quite a few birds. This was after killing something like 4 birds in 2 days time.

So, I didn’t go to the annual home owner’s meeting for our subdivision this year. But, in my absence, I was nominated and elected to the board of directors (well, I knew I was going to be nominated, one of my neighbors called me a couple weeks before hand and said his term was ending and would I mind if he nominated me to fill his place, to which I said OK, but I would have thought not showing up for the annual meeting for the second or third year in a row would have kept me from getting elected So, last week we had our first board meeting. Then, tonight, we had an unplanned followup meeting. You see, one of the guys who lives in the neighborhood has been the person that cuts the grass in the common areas for 4 years now. Unfortunately, costs the last couple have years have gotten out of hand. So, at the last meeting, the board blindsided him and yanked the contract without giving him any chance to do anything about it. This meeting was called by him so that he could respond after having had a bit to think things through and figure out what went wrong. Well, it took almost two hours, but after much wrangling and me telling the other board members that they acted inappropriately in blindsiding this guy, and telling the guy that I agreed that he got shafted (yes, those are very close to direct quotes), we managed to work out a new deal. We are writing up a new contract. Instead of doing things on a pay per cut basis, we are doing a contract that basically says he gets a flat rate per year, no minimum cuts, no maximum cuts, but he has to keep the place looking good and if he fails to keep up with the cutting then we can terminate the contract and hire a typical lawn cutting contractor on a per cut basis. Everyone seemed to be happy after that.

When I got to my first meeting they told me that it’s normally only a 15 minute meeting about 4 times a year. In the last week I’ve spent 4 hours at Clark’s house. They lie!!!!

Oh well, at least I had fun letting the people have it when they were being childish (and I’m the youngest one there!)

Well, I upgraded my primary internet server (I have a top level domain that I own, plus misc. services) yesterday from Red Hat Linux 8.0 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 3 Advanced Server. The upgrade went fine as far as the software is concerned. The hardware is a different issue. My primary filesystem is on a software RAID5 array. In a RAID5 array you can loose any 1 disk and it still keeps working (assuming you don’t have any hotspares, which I don’t). I had two disks give me sector errors during the upgrade. I had to take the machine into rescue mode, reassemble the array with 1 of the failed disks marked as good forcefully, then replay the ext3 journal, then fsck the filesystem, then hot add the other failed disk and let it get rebuilt. Only after all that was done could I redo the upgrade to finish it and make sure no files were corrupted. After completing that, it only took some minor tweaks to get things working under RHEL3 the way they did under RHL 8.0. Whew! Only roughly 1 day of downtime total

So, I’m getting ready to walk out of the bedroom into the living area and I hear Jessica yell “Holy crap!” I go to see what’s up, and she’s standing in the front entryway with the front door open. Evidently, she went to pull the wreath off the front door, but when she opened the door she saw 3 deer standing in our front yard having a snack. Well, they didn’t immediately run off so she pointed me towards them. About that time they decide maybe our front yard is not the best place to be. Also about that time our smallest dog spots them and starts her siren barking. I’m hoping the combination of both human and dog noises and smells will keep them away so that *maybe* they will quit eating our flowers. Who knows. If not maybe I’ll getting a hunting license and just camp out with a pair of night vision goggles in my office waiting for them to come back and when they do, try and make myself some tasty venison! Yum! (OK, I don’t normally hunt deer, or anything for that matter, but after last March, I just might do so as a revenge type thing…)

I haven’t been posting much (not like I ever did except when I was laid up after surgery and had nothing else to do). But, this time the reason I haven’t is that this holiday season has been soooo long. Back in Sept. I went to Missouri to see my grandmother Ledford right after she was diagnosed with bone cancer (which is pretty much terminal in all cases). Well, in early December, she passed away. Then my parents come out to visit and we have the incident that lead to Zeus passing away. Then, the day after my parents left to come out here, my other grandmother started feeling ill. My mother’s brother, Charles, lives right next door to my grandma Shaner and he looks after her. Well, she just thought she had the flu and didn’t want to go anywhere to get it checked out. So, Charles didn’t push the issue. Then she started feeling a bit worse and thought the flu had gone into pneumonia, but she still didn’t want to go to the hospital, so Charles didn’t make her. Then, after mom and the others made it back home, mom went to visit grandma Shaner. She really didn’t think she looked good and wanted her to go to the hospital, but grandma said she was feeling better and didn’t need to. Mom stayed with grandma that night. The next day mom went home and sent Marge (mom’s sister) out to stay with grandma the next night. At 4am in the morning, mom gets a call from Marge. Marge is all panicky because grandma fell off of the couch in her sleep and couldn’t get back up, so Marge had to put her back on the couch and Marge said grandma just felt like total dead weight while being moved. She didn’t have any strength to help out. Plus, she was cold and clammy to the touch. So, mom decides to call an ambulance whether grandma wants her to or not. Theyget her to the hospital, and as it turns out, the original illness was due to a heart attack and when she fell out of bed at 4am it was caused by another heart attack. At this point, the doctors say her heart is so badly damaged that there isn’t really anything they can do besides give her medicine. So, they kept her a couple days and then checked her out of the hospital (well, if you can’t do anything for someone, then no sense keeping them in the hospital whether they are well or not). Grandma Shaner lives about a 20 minute drive from the closest city, and a good 30 minute drive from any hospital. As bad as she is, that’s *way* too far away from help should she need it. On the other hand, my parents are just 2 minutes from the closest hospital by car.

So, my parents cared for both my great uncle Henry and my grandma Ledford in their home for about the last 3 years. Uncle Henry is still there (but his health is failing too, he has to be on oxygen now). My grandma Ledford just passed away about a month ago. I was thinking my parents would finally get a break from the constant care they’ve been giving for quite a while now. Then my grandma Shaner has this happen and is now living with my parents in the room that grandma Ledford used the use. Grandma Shaner is bed ridden and has to have help to even get out of bed to use the restroom. Evidently, she’s in good spirits and is still all there mentally, but the doctors told mom to cherish every moment that they have with her from now on out because her heart is so badly damaged that she could basically expire at any time.

My parents have been really something to spend as much time as they have caring for relatives in poor health, but I worry about the amount of time and energy this takes from them. They’ve been so busy doing all this stuff for so long that they’ve had to put most of the things in their own lives on hold. They really needed a break from it all after grandma Ledford passed, but now they are right back in the same position they were before she passed. I certainly don’t wish anyone else would pass away, but I do wish my parents had more of their own lives and less stress than they have now. After all, they aren’t in the best of health themselves in some ways and all this stress and work can’t be helping with that.

The surgeon told us yesterday that Zeus’ case of pancreatitus was very severe. What we found out today was that in talking to one of the other doctors, she admitted that it was actually one of the worst she’s ever seen.

Thought this would be of general use to other people out there. Zeus is doing so poorly not because of any bones (although those can be very dangerous for dogs and cats because any fowl/poultry bone that has been cooked is thinner and more brittle than things like bones from pigs and cows, and that thin, brittle nature makes them cause stomach and bowel perforations if the animal doesn’t completely chew them up before swallowing, and since our Zeus is *SUCH* a food hog, he *always* tries to swallow his food as fast as possible with as little chewing as possible when we are handing out treats). Not because of how much food he ate. He’s doing this poorly because he ate a combination of too much food and food with too high of a fat content. Pancreatitus (sp?) happens when a sudden influx of fat hits the small intestines and the pancreas kicks up enzyme production to handle it. If the pancreas gets overloaded, then it kicks the enzyme production up to a super high level, a level so high that it can’t even control it any more. At that point, both the intestines and the blood start to see elevated levels of the digestive enzymes. It can also cause the intestines to sometimes back flow a little fluid out of the intestine up the small tube connecting the intestines to the pancreas. When that happens, you usually have bacteria make it into the pancreas and suddenly you now have to deal with an infection on top of everything else. And all of this is happening with an organ that is *SUPER* sensitive. In dogs, when a doctor knows they are going to be operating even just in the area of the pancreas, they will try to get an ultrasound to find out exactly where the pancreas is so that during their surgery they can make sure and *NOT TOUCH* that thing. Even just a minor touch during surgery can be enough to trigger onset of pancreatitus.

And pancreatitus is not nearly so rare as people think. It’s just that it comes in degrees. You can get pancreatitus that’s so minor that you don’t even really know. As it gets a bit worse, the dog may vomit or have other “tummy” problems but otherwise be acting normal. As it gets a bit worse, they start to get dehydrated and act a little lethargic. This is the point that people might take their animal into the vet, the vet says no food or water for 48 hours to let the pancreas settle down, then slowly add back in mild foods. As it gets worse from here, the diagnosis starts to become much less optimistic and the problem much more life threatening. But, the point of all this, is that dogs get pancreatitus much more often than humans suspect purely from humans doing things like feeding them chunks of fat off of steak or hams or stuff like that. It’s the excessively high fat content that triggers this more than anything. That’s why dog food has a very controlled dietary balance of fat versus other nutrient types. And because it usually isn’t severe, most people don’t think there is anything wrong with feeding their dogs fat like that. Then they go overboard just one time, and that can be the one time that shows them just how wrong they were.

I wrote all this up because I wasn’t aware of a lot of this before this all happened. I knew table food bad, small quantities only. But I didn’t know why, and I didn’t know how those small quantities that seem OK can trick you into thinking “Oh, this big hunk of stuff won’t be bad for them, they’ve ate table scraps all their lives.” But, how many times did those table scraps give them minor illnesses that you thought was just the flu or a cold? How many times have you made them sick and didn’t realize that it was the food you fed them that did it? I know I’ve probably done it many times without knowing the full story. Now I do. I thought others might like to have the benefit of this realization.

Went and saw him this morning. He’s still doing really poorly. The worst part about this morning’s visit was that the doctor let us know that if he doesn’t improve in the next 48 hours, if the drainage from his belly doesn’t slow down and he doesn’t start to ease off on the pain and the blood pressure and heart rate don’t get better and the blood clotting is still not working properly, then we should really consider putting him to sleep at that point. We were told basically that if he isn’t better in 48 hours, he probably won’t get better, and keeping him going after that is just a very slow, agonizing way for him to finally pass as opposed to the much quiter, calmer, and more peaceful passing of putting him down. Not a good conversation to hear. Neither of us took that well. Diversion….need a diversion….